


Need

by crowdent



Series: Partners [2]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Child Abuse, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 08:28:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5121635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowdent/pseuds/crowdent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nathan isn’t in love with her.</p>
<p>He’s not in love with Victoria, like he isn’t in love with oxygen or his own heartbeat. Nothings feels simple enough to express exactly what Victoria means to him, but if he had to hazard at it, he would just say he needs her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Need

Victoria is star. At least, Nathan considers her one. She’s bright and twinkling, playful, but not at all sunshine. She’s steady and illuminating in the darkness. She is always there. Victoria leads the way when hope is lost; she can always be seen. She is the North Star. He thinks of her, staring at the darkened sky through the window, and wishes she were there with him, wrapping her arms around him and keeping him warm. He knows he’s not allowed, not how things are right then. But he wants it so badly. 

He wants her safe more.

Victoria isn’t isn’t fire and passion like Nathan, burning up under his own intensity until he fizzles and dies. Victoria isn’t like him. She’s more gentle, and shy and fragile. But only he knew that. Only he could say what Victoria’s soul looked like. Under the makeup and designer clothes and the perfect hair and jewelry and under her bitch persona and deep, deep down in her core, Nathan knows what she looks like. 

Nathan knows what Victoria looks like no matter what, though. He knows what she looks like with tears rolling down her face, and smearing mascara. He knows her in anger, clenched fists and tight jawed and tense like a rubber band ready to snap. He knows her drunk and high, giggling and holding onto his arm, with words slurred and ears red and heat on her breath. He knows her playful and smirking, nudging him with her shoulder and knocking knees with him. He knows her pride, looking tough like she isn’t shattered on the inside; knows how she’ll cry alone, later, and hate herself for her every flaw.

He knows what she looks like, half naked and on top of him, panting for air, eyes bright and leering at him. Knows the taste of her sweat, the ridge of her hips, the divots of her collarbones, the arch of her spine. He knows what she looks like desperate and what she sounds like, breathy and high pitched and needy. He knows her intimately, and inside out and breaking and together and happy, sad, everything in between. He knows her like he knows himself.

Nathan isn’t in love with her.

He’s not in love with Victoria, like he isn’t in love with oxygen or his own heartbeat. Nothings feels simple enough to express exactly what Victoria means to him, but if he had to hazard at it, he would just say he needs her. He knows he does. He needs her close and in his life, reminding him of what was good and what could be. He needs her, wrapped around him, heartbeats mingling, whispering sweet nothings into his ear. Telling him that he’s good, that he’s enough, that she loves him. He needs her taste on his tongue and her touch on his skin and he needs that strength and fragility to hold and comfort and keep safe.

No one else needs Nathan Prescott. Not a single fucking person needs him, and he knows that. No one needs him, but Victoria does. Even better than needing him, though, Victoria wants him. Even falling apart, screaming, lashing out and shattering into raw, bloody pieces, screaming for his father. Even snarling at her like a feral animal, punching walls, wailing, Victoria wants him. She chooses him again and again, every day. She’s seen him at some of his lowest lows and she still supports him, holding him in the dark and reminding him to breathe.

She believes in him and that’s why she can’t ever know what he’s done. Victoria is off limits. He wants her safe from the Dark Room and Jefferson...and him. Nathan would rather die than see her there. Would rather sacrifice anyone else just to keep her away. He knows Victoria. He knows that it would break her. 

If anyone deserved to break, it was him. He would throw his bloody and beaten body over hers again and again, even if it was just his corpse, if only it meant she would be protected a little longer. 

Victoria was so precious. He could suffer anything if it was for her. He would kill. He would die. He needed her to breathe. To exist. He needed her arms squeezing him so tightly he would pop. Wanted to slice himself open and have her crawl inside so they could finally be close enough. He wanted her hands in his organs, mixing up his insides, maybe finding what was so inherently wrong with him and putting it right. Making him good with her hands. Making him worth something. He wanted to be good. He wanted to be a good boy so badly. 

Why was he so fucking dirty?

But Victoria wasn’t dirty. She was mean, maybe. She could be cruel and harsh. But she was never cruel to him.

Nathan could feel his father’s hands on him. Nathan knew the feeling of Sean Prescott’s knuckles and the bitter vitriol of his words. Nathan knew the sounds of his own desperate pleas and sobs and he knew that Sean Prescott did not show mercy and Sean Prescott was never wrong.

Nathan knew Mark Jefferson’s wrath. Knew the feeling of his shoes in his ribs. Knew the way that Mark would flip between cruel and harsh, but sometimes oh so gentle. He knew the grip and the control of Mark’s fingers bruising his hips, pushing him down. Taking what he wanted from Nathan, just like everyone else. But at least Mark would clean him up and praise him after. He wouldn’t leave him broken, on the tiles, choking on his own blood like Sean Prescott would. Mark could be gentle too.

But Victoria was even kinder. She was never mean. She never hurt him like that. She was too nice. Sometimes, it hurt to look at her because his heart would seize like he was being stabbed. Stabbed to death by her love and her words of affection and how she would defend him even if he didn’t deserve it. 

He didn’t. He didn’t deserve it and didn’t deserve her. 

But god, would he take her. He would take her again and again with bloody, dirt caked, selfish hands. He would covet her and stain her skin with his filth and wrap around her, crooning softly in the worst of his nights. He would cling and obsess and take whatever she would give him like she was the freshest spring and he was dying of thirst. 

Without her, he would fall apart. He knew that without a doubt. He needed her strength and conviction and her endlessly focused goals. He needed her roughness and her fear and anxiety. He needed her being, a balm for everything wrong with him. He needed to drink her down and rub her all over him, just to make him fresh and new and Good.

But he also knew that he was too much. Too intense. Too everything all at once, fast and shouting and electric and voices on voices, racing, fighting, throwing, screaming. Shut up shut up shut up!

Pressure, pressure, noise, need, want, fear, anxiety, anger, terror. He was so much all at once and he knew that he relied on her too often to quiet the noise in his skull just so he could feel normal.

Nathan also knew that Victoria did not need him as much as he needed her.

And that knowledge broke him the most.


End file.
